• Steinbeck’s hometown will lose its public library system because of a financial crisis. Locals have placed a black armband onto a six foot bronze Steinbeck statue.
• Salon interviews Jerry Stahl: “I’ve pretty much been pegged for life as ‘that junkie who wrote ALF.'”
• Sylvia Plath’s Ariiel has been read in its entirety for the first time. Several effigies of Ted Hughes were burned, but not enough of them had been created to last throughout the duration.
• Hemingway’s secretary has penned a memoir. The book will be part of a new Modern Library series called For Whom the Staff Tolls, which will include memoirs from Papa’s accountant, cook, and masseuse.
• A secret staircase reported to be the inspiration for Mrs. Rochester has been rediscovered in North Yorkshire. Several actors in the area have offered to fill in for the mad woman in the attic, but none of them have proved convincing enough for the local historical society.
• Nick Hornby addresses the “no snark” policy at The Beleiver: “And of course, there’s no consensus on what is an ‘egregiously bad’ book.” Apparently, he hasn’t read I Am Charlotte Simmons.
• Ian McEwan reveals some dirt about his new novel: “a British neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne, leaves his central London house to pick up his car – a sleek, silver Mercedes 500 – to drive to his regular game of squash.” Not much, but at a recent reading, McEwan also read a passage about Perowne overcoming his shame in owning a car. McEwan also assures the Times that he isn’t taking any kickbacks from BMW.
• The upcoming Barbara Boxer novel (which, along with Mark, I must express my apologies for) gets some press at the Contra Costa Times. Giving new meaning to the mantra “Write about what you know,” its protagonist is “an activist senator who does battle with right-wing ideologues.” It remains my firm hope that Boxer spends more time doing battle in real life rather than fiction over the next four years.

We’ll give Tanenhaus half a brownie point this week because it’s close to Xmas. This week’s NYTBR is a big mixed bag. We advise against the continued employment of Joe “I Never Met A Subject I Didn’t Hate” Queenan (along with the end of silly photo captions such as “Johnny Unitas of the Colts” asuming that educated folks aren’t familiar with football legend-team associations). But we dug the Truman Capote profile, which combined biography, light critical consensus and some naughty bits into a hot essay by the always excellent Daniel Mendelsohn.

However, Laura Miller needs to get out of the house more. We take pride in our dirty minds, pointing out that sexual suggestion and naughty jokes come with most of our book recommendations (some over the course of our lives, in flagrante delicto), while recommending that intercourse itself is best performed rather than endlessly talked about.

This morning, several conservative litbloggers weighed in on the Red States vs. Blue States business.

Well, when you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way.

Really, I haven’t seen such vitriolic political nonsense in this nation since the Baltimore Riots of 1812 and 1861. (And if Baltimore is the place that the shit starts stirring, I expect the Hag to offer a Daily Riot Likelihood Report.) Let’s not make that mistake, shall we? The election’s over, the nation’s divided. Depending upon where you sit, the country is either (a) going to hell in a handbasket or (b) moving in the direction the people want it to. How about this: Can we move on now? You have your side, we have ours. You’ll have a cakewalk, we’ll have a fight. Blah blah blah.

But in the end, we’ll kick your asses. We always do.

• Mark Sarvas has cemented himself as the roaming reading attendee of the blogosphere. In addition to checking out David Foster Wallace (against his will! and with a rollicking backblog to boot!), he also has the skinny on Vermin on the Mount. We don’t believe San Francisco is the center of the literary universe, in part because the pronouncement was handed down from the mountain by Sam Tanenhaus, but we’ll be doing our best over the coming months to offer similar reports here, as time permits.
• Some of our favorite litbloggers will be on the Round Table, a WAMC radio program, this morning.
• Adobe Books, home to frenetic art shows and a great place to nab rare books has their books organized by color. If you’re in the San Francsico area, check it out.
• As predicted by nearly everyone, Suite Francaise, the long-lost novel written by Holocaust victim Irene Nemirovsky has taken the Renaudot. This is the first time that the esteemed French prize has been awarded posthumously. Foreign rights were garnered at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
• In what may be another sign of changing literary priorities, North Carolina Central University has withdrawn funding for its literary magazine. It was just $7,000 on the budget, and the money will now go to “student leadership and women’s issue programs.” The remaining $6,000, no doubt, will go to more perqs for the football team.
• Alice Munro gets another writeup — this time in Newsday. Fortunately, this time around, the article concentrates more on her writing (and her love for William Maxwell) rather than wasting column inches on her “thinnish” weight.
• Jonathan Rose has an intriguing article about the working class’s relationship with reading over the years.
• Nevada has a poet laureate?
• A film is in the works on the life of Sir Walter Scott.
• And Gerard Jones has gone Hollywood on us (via Moby).

There is a rat in the apartment. I discovered him making an escape tonight after investigating some sounds in the kitchen. The rat is small and scampers through a small hole that I found near the stove. Even though the rodent may be tiny and spurious, the simple fact is that he scares the bejesus out of me, as rats seem to do. There’s the disturbing possibility that he could run like the devil in the post-midnight hours and take a bite out of my flesh. Or something worse. I didn’t read H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls” lightly.

The timing’s about right, given that I end up dealing with a rat perhaps every four or five years. The last time, the rat emerged as I was whipping up my trademark pasta sauce. I was a foolish twenty-six back then. And I immediately freaked out. This time around, there’s slightly more maturity, in that my reaction doesn’t involve jumping onto the closest countertop like some housewife in a Warner Brothers cartoon. So my manhood’s on the line too.

But this sort of thing is to be expected. It’s getting to be the wintertime. Which means the rats are coming in from the cold.

Of course, when humans in the Western world deal with these sorts of things, they, of course, go all out. Certainly in my case, obscenely so. I’m now the proud owner of three boxes of rat poison, several traps, and a barrage of truly masochistic devices that will kill this dreadful beast. I feel like Wile E. Coyote ordering from Acme.

Part of me sees the hypocrisy in demonizing the rat. Part of me would like to be friends with the rat. But because I’m terribly afraid, because I detest its presence and its mentality (which is, primarily, to scavenge upon what it might find, which isn’t much, given that my food’s all packed away), I want the rat dead. I want it out of my life. Go bother some other bachelor. The NIMBY principle was never more strernly (and justifiably!) applied than it is for rats.

So I have declared war. Chances are the rat’s just as frightened of me as I am of him. (He certainly skedaddled fast when I turned the light on.) Granted, if the bookies were to put a spread on this, I’d win by leaps and bounds. I have a bigger brain. I’m larger than the rat. But it moves much faster and the rat’s interests and existence aren’t as complicated as mine. Even so, does the rat have brothers or sisters? Or is it simply vermin prepared to spread a new wave of bubonic? Even if I defeat the rat (as I suspect I will), who’s the real winner in this battle?